5 ms·

These policy experts need to sit down with social workers, case managers, ER and psychiatric center physicians and staff. The most visible homeless people that

These policy experts need to sit down with social workers, case managers, ER and psychiatric center physicians and staff. The most visible homeless people that are the jarring entropy in American cities are always going to be the low functioning indigent population with mental health and/or addiction issues. These people have no choice but to be visible. They obviously can’t succeed in their current state. Where can someone go who has baseline mental health issues, has been low SES for their entire life, and has no real support network? When this type of person is in crisis a shelter isn’t going to be a safe convalescent house to get mental health treatment and stability/sobriety. The US is woefully inadequate here. We let our lowest functioning and least supported (as in support network of family and friends) members of society walk the streets panhandling by day and sleeping in the dirt by night. US cities need convalescent facilities and long term psychiatric facilities for the indigents who are mentally unable to tackle their own enormous critical problem and for the ones who are long term addicted and need strong support. (Long term alcohol use and amphetamine use lead to different kinds of psychosis. Wernicke/Korsakoff and amphetamine induced psychosis respectively. These people are not sound enough of mind to do this without long term facilities. We don’t have those in the US anymore. Unsupervised public housing is not the answer for these people. Perhaps for the less apparent higher functioning and invisible poor it is.

cascom 5y ago
I think you make a great distinction between the visible and invisible homeless, and that the solutions to those two problems are totally different.
HWR_14 5y ago
The intermittent homeless (or invisible homeless) are the majority and the cheapest to correct. They are also more likely to include children and can help prevent intergenerational issues. That group can be helped by public housing.
rkk3 5y ago
> These policy experts need to sit down with social workers, case managers, ER and psychiatric center physicians and staff. > The most visible homeless people that are the jarring entropy in American cities are always going to be the low functioning indigent population with mental health and/or addiction issues. The most visible homeless are also a small minority of the people who deal with Homelessness in America - which is why they are addressing housing. California had a homeless population of 150,000 in 2021 [1], most whom were not living on the sidewalk & dealing with drug and/or psychiatric problems. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-population-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-po...
- Pigalowda 5y ago
  For sure. It’s definitely a good thing to provide subsidized housing for the poor. Poverty mitigation is wonderful! But I believe the public wants the visible homeless cared for in a more responsible way.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    I suspect we all broadly agree here. Your point just feels...not irrelevant, but...odd. It's not that there are two types of homeless people, and people are one or the other. The "visible homeless" are a progression from the invisible, semi/temporarily homeless. I've known people who started down the path of homelessness (and one who spent some time in that state and got out). Poverty in general, and housing instability are two causes of that transition. If you can afford rent, afford basic comforts and stability, maintain health coverage and afford healthcare, you're not going to suddenly jump into sleeping under a highway and raving at pedestrians. There's a long journey to that state. We want to prevent that initial slide into temporary homelessness that precedes long-term homelessness, and all the issues that frequently arise with it. When the ship is sinking, and someone says "we need to plug the hole", you don't respond with "No, bail harder!" Sure, bail harder, but the issue isn't that the people trying to plug the hole are missing the core issue.
  - rocqua 5y ago
    It seems more likely that the public wants to feel less bad about / unsafe around the visible homeless. Hence a way to get them out of sight without massive mistreatment would probably be enough to make the general public happy. Put differently, my thesis is that the public cares about people who need the most help, not because they feel they deserve that help the most. Instead I think its because those who need the most help are also the most visible. This primarily makes the public feel unsafe, and secondarily makes it harder to ignore the problem. An effect of this is that the non-visible homeless are de-prioritized for help for reasons of PR. That does not necessarily mean these non-visible homeless deserve more priority, just that their current level of priority could only be right be 'accident'.
    - 5y ago
adreamingsoul 5y ago
Absolutely. I have personal experience with having a family member who was homeless due to mental health issues. Unfortunately, housing was not the solution for them nor was it the right solution. They were homeless for a couple of years before volunteering to be committed. Due to their illness, it was not safe to house them with family or around others who are on the road to recovery. The system is slow and challenging to navigate and eventually (after several years) my mother was able to navigate the system to become a court appointed guardian. On the other side, I have also been in government appointed committees that set housing policy and have had to listen to many “experts” explain that housing is the solution for homelessness and their suggestions is usually along the lines of “relax the codes and permitting process so builders can build more homes”. Needless to say, I’m somewhat sceptical of this argument but that is probably mostly due to my own bias. Imho, I think our tax money should be going to social services and universal healthcare.
- pydry 5y ago
  >On the other side, I have also been in government appointed committees that set housing policy and have had to listen to many “experts” explain that housing is the solution for homelessness and their suggestions is usually along the lines of “relax the codes and permitting process so builders can build more homes”. This an artefact of lobbying by the building industry who can absolutely rake in profits building luxury housing but are restricted in terms of where they can do it. It will absolutely nothing for the supply of affordable housing unless luxury housing is taxed to death and building affordable housing is engineered to be profitable, but they'll fight that tooth and nail. Nobody exchanges 16% profit margins for 4% willingly. It might even make things worse if the stripped regulations are about mandating % of affordable homes in new developments (which theyd fucking LOVE) and it will probably ensure quality goes down the tubes. Only public housing will actually solve the supply issue. Singapore is the best model here.
  - adreamingsoul 5y ago
    I agree. From my experience, a city does not have the budget for public housing, the free market doesn’t value it, and raising property taxes to pay for it is usually contentious. So that leaves federal funding. Might as well use my taxes to provide funding for public housing projects.
rayiner 5y ago
Part of the problem here is that “homeless” has a pretty broad technical definition, while what ordinary people mean by “homeless” is specifically the highly visible indigent. They’re not thinking of the single mom at the woman’s shelter whose lost her apartment. There are two separate problems which both need to be addressed.
michaelt 5y ago
In the language of my country's homeless charities, there are "rough sleepers" - people who are literally sleeping in shop doorways and on park benches - but there's a much larger number of the "hidden homeless" - people who are sleeping on an accommodating friend or family member's couch, or some other temporary arrangement like the government paying for them to stay in a bed and breakfast. Rough sleepers may well have untreated addiction and mental illness problems - there's a reason they've exhausted the patience of their loved ones - but many people among the hidden homeless have simply been priced out of the housing market.
andrewla 5y ago
I see a paper with this many graphs and you know that they are completely missing the point. They have tried to measure a phenomenon based on a reductive description of the problem. Defining "homelessness" to mean "not living in a house" means that you cluster a huge amount of people into that category, and you end up trying to solve a different problem. I'm all for increasing housing supply to drive down the cost of housing, but that's a completely different problem. That solution may drive down your metrics of "homelessness" but it's obvious that a different solution is necessary to address the "visible homeless".

cascom 5y ago

I think you make a great distinction between the visible and invisible homeless, and that the solutions to those two problems are totally different.

HWR_14 5y ago

The intermittent homeless (or invisible homeless) are the majority and the cheapest to correct. They are also more likely to include children and can help prevent intergenerational issues. That group can be helped by public housing.

rkk3 5y ago

> These policy experts need to sit down with social workers, case managers, ER and psychiatric center physicians and staff. > The most visible homeless people that are the jarring entropy in American cities are always going to be the low functioning indigent population with mental health and/or addiction issues. The most visible homeless are also a small minority of the people who deal with Homelessness in America - which is why they are addressing housing. California had a homeless population of 150,000 in 2021 [1], most whom were not living on the sidewalk & dealing with drug and/or psychiatric problems. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-population-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-po...

Pigalowda 5y ago
For sure. It’s definitely a good thing to provide subsidized housing for the poor. Poverty mitigation is wonderful! But I believe the public wants the visible homeless cared for in a more responsible way.
- lkbm 5y ago
  I suspect we all broadly agree here. Your point just feels...not irrelevant, but...odd. It's not that there are two types of homeless people, and people are one or the other. The "visible homeless" are a progression from the invisible, semi/temporarily homeless. I've known people who started down the path of homelessness (and one who spent some time in that state and got out). Poverty in general, and housing instability are two causes of that transition. If you can afford rent, afford basic comforts and stability, maintain health coverage and afford healthcare, you're not going to suddenly jump into sleeping under a highway and raving at pedestrians. There's a long journey to that state. We want to prevent that initial slide into temporary homelessness that precedes long-term homelessness, and all the issues that frequently arise with it. When the ship is sinking, and someone says "we need to plug the hole", you don't respond with "No, bail harder!" Sure, bail harder, but the issue isn't that the people trying to plug the hole are missing the core issue.
- rocqua 5y ago
  It seems more likely that the public wants to feel less bad about / unsafe around the visible homeless. Hence a way to get them out of sight without massive mistreatment would probably be enough to make the general public happy. Put differently, my thesis is that the public cares about people who need the most help, not because they feel they deserve that help the most. Instead I think its because those who need the most help are also the most visible. This primarily makes the public feel unsafe, and secondarily makes it harder to ignore the problem. An effect of this is that the non-visible homeless are de-prioritized for help for reasons of PR. That does not necessarily mean these non-visible homeless deserve more priority, just that their current level of priority could only be right be 'accident'.
  - 5y ago

adreamingsoul 5y ago

Absolutely. I have personal experience with having a family member who was homeless due to mental health issues. Unfortunately, housing was not the solution for them nor was it the right solution. They were homeless for a couple of years before volunteering to be committed. Due to their illness, it was not safe to house them with family or around others who are on the road to recovery. The system is slow and challenging to navigate and eventually (after several years) my mother was able to navigate the system to become a court appointed guardian. On the other side, I have also been in government appointed committees that set housing policy and have had to listen to many “experts” explain that housing is the solution for homelessness and their suggestions is usually along the lines of “relax the codes and permitting process so builders can build more homes”. Needless to say, I’m somewhat sceptical of this argument but that is probably mostly due to my own bias. Imho, I think our tax money should be going to social services and universal healthcare.

pydry 5y ago
>On the other side, I have also been in government appointed committees that set housing policy and have had to listen to many “experts” explain that housing is the solution for homelessness and their suggestions is usually along the lines of “relax the codes and permitting process so builders can build more homes”. This an artefact of lobbying by the building industry who can absolutely rake in profits building luxury housing but are restricted in terms of where they can do it. It will absolutely nothing for the supply of affordable housing unless luxury housing is taxed to death and building affordable housing is engineered to be profitable, but they'll fight that tooth and nail. Nobody exchanges 16% profit margins for 4% willingly. It might even make things worse if the stripped regulations are about mandating % of affordable homes in new developments (which theyd fucking LOVE) and it will probably ensure quality goes down the tubes. Only public housing will actually solve the supply issue. Singapore is the best model here.
- adreamingsoul 5y ago
  I agree. From my experience, a city does not have the budget for public housing, the free market doesn’t value it, and raising property taxes to pay for it is usually contentious. So that leaves federal funding. Might as well use my taxes to provide funding for public housing projects.

rayiner 5y ago

Part of the problem here is that “homeless” has a pretty broad technical definition, while what ordinary people mean by “homeless” is specifically the highly visible indigent. They’re not thinking of the single mom at the woman’s shelter whose lost her apartment. There are two separate problems which both need to be addressed.

michaelt 5y ago

In the language of my country's homeless charities, there are "rough sleepers" - people who are literally sleeping in shop doorways and on park benches - but there's a much larger number of the "hidden homeless" - people who are sleeping on an accommodating friend or family member's couch, or some other temporary arrangement like the government paying for them to stay in a bed and breakfast. Rough sleepers may well have untreated addiction and mental illness problems - there's a reason they've exhausted the patience of their loved ones - but many people among the hidden homeless have simply been priced out of the housing market.

andrewla 5y ago

I see a paper with this many graphs and you know that they are completely missing the point. They have tried to measure a phenomenon based on a reductive description of the problem. Defining "homelessness" to mean "not living in a house" means that you cluster a huge amount of people into that category, and you end up trying to solve a different problem. I'm all for increasing housing supply to drive down the cost of housing, but that's a completely different problem. That solution may drive down your metrics of "homelessness" but it's obvious that a different solution is necessary to address the "visible homeless".